Pati Mattrick’s German shepherd just wouldn’t go near the ivy-covered blue spruce tree just off her porch in Elizabethtown.

Curious, she investigated and found two dead baby birds that must have fallen from a nest somewhere in the massive tree’s loft. She disposed of them.

But, still, the dog slinked around in circles. She went back outside in the wind and rain. Pulling aside the ivy and feeling around the roots, she spotted another form.

This bird was alive, but barely. Probably only several days out of its mother’s egg, it had tiny fuzz on its head but mostly wet, naked skin.

She cradled it and took it inside.

The first thing she did was e-mail three wildlife rehabilitators and asked for advice on how to care for the orphan. Each told her gently but firmly that the bird might survive three days, no more.

Undeterred, Mattrick says her motherly instinct kicked in. She fashioned a makeshift incubator with a heating pad, Tupperware bowl with a nest of linen napkins, all placed inside a fish bowl.

Now, what do I feed it? she wondered.

She didn’t know, but went back out in the rain and dug up some worms and insects. She took a razor blade and chopped them into tiny morsels, then fed them into the bird’s beak with tweezers.

One night after feeding, when she’d had the bird about a week, it barely moved. She resigned herself that the bird would die overnight.

The next day, it was fine. “I think I overfed her,” Mattrick says sheepishly.

The bird did not die. It grew feathers and started to sing whenever it heard its rescuer’s voice.

“She really believed I was her mother,” says Mattrick, 56.

She named it Stormygirl for the tempestuous day the bird was found. She kept dicing bugs and bought live meal worms from a local feed store.

Still the bird grew. It sprouted streaks of yellow and Mattrick determined that it was actually a she. A female house finch, to be exact.

Until 1940, house finches were only found in the western United States. But some were illegally sold as cagebirds back East.

Threatened with prosecution, residents of New York released some of the finches. Today, they may be found throughout the East and Midwest. Around Lancaster County, they are one of the most common birds at backyard feeders.

Mattrick taught Stormygirl to feed herself. It was also about this time that Mattrick was mortified to learn that house finches don’t eat bugs and worms at all. They’re vegetarians.

Now, Stormygirl eats top-of-the-line birdseed and loves strawberries and blueberries. Her favorite food, though, is apple turnover.

Teaching her to fly was trying. Mattrick placed her on the arm of a Queen Anne’s chair in the living room. When the bird began to flap her wings furiously, Mattrick nudged her off.

The bird promptly crashed to the floor. But on the third try she took wing and flew across the room.

Now that she could fly freely about the house, Mattrick built her her own aviary in one of her children’s former bedrooms. She made a teepee of branches from floor to ceiling and put a tarp under it to catch droppings.

“I don’t know what the neighbors thought when I was dragging in all those trees. But they know I’m an artist,” she laughs.

Like many young children, Stormygirl got a little freaked out sleeping in the dark. Nothing a little night light couldn’t cure.

She likes to get going in the morning at 8. She makes four or five silent flutters into her mom’s room to let her know time to get going. If Mattrick isn’t up by then, she lands on her head and starts pulling hair.

Similarly, if it’s after 8 at night and Mattrick is still in the living room watching TV, the bird will fly in to remind her she’s ready for roost and to turn the night light on.

Stormygirl follows her mom around the house. Often, she perches on Mattrick’s glasses as she does chores.

The bird can be mischievous. Once, a silver chain necklace Mattrick had laid on the bureau to wear suddenly disappeared. She found it a week later behind Stormygirl’s cage.

And sing — Stormygirl sings her heart out all day.

Since Mattrick got a second dog and three cockatiels, Stormygirl now sleeps in a roomy cage at night.

On Saturday, Stormygirl celebrated her fourth birthday with a cherry turnover. Mattrick sang happy birthday to her while Stormygirl sat on her shoulder. She was rewarded with a little peck on the cheek.

It’s not likely to be the bird’s last birthday. House finches are known to live 9 to 15 years in captivity.

To say that the bird she saved against all odds has brought joy into Pati Mattrick’s life would just be scratching the surface.

In short order, Mattrick had gotten divorced, become disabled with a mysterious disease, had to use a wheelchair and lost her preschool teaching job. She had to go on disability. The last of her four daughters had moved away from home.

“I had lost my identity and my children,” she says. She was, in fact, stuck in depression.

Finding the bird changed all of that. “To me, it was uplifting to know I was needed again,” she says. “I needed her singing and her joy and she needed me. Even now, when she sings, it reminds me every day of the miracle that she is.

“I don’t think I have ever had a sad day since I brought her in.”

Mattrick, who remarried a year ago, is in good health and has started painting again, thinks the bedraggled bird she found one day in a storm wasn’t just happenstance. She thinks it was a gift. A gift from God.

Sadly, the Pennsylvania Game Commission on Thursday morning seized Stormygirl.

Taking the house finch from the wild and making it a pet violates a state law as well a federal law that protects migratory birds, the Game Commission said.

When the story above titled “The miracle bird,” on how the bird’s rescue had changed the woman’s life was published, the agency was forced to act, said Jerry Feaser, Game Commission spokesman.

The Game Commission obtained a search warrant, and a wildlife conservation officer, accompanied by an Elizabethtown Borough policeman, showed up unannounced at the home of Pati Mattrick around 9 a.m.

The Stormygirl was taken to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, where it will be determined if she can be conditioned to survive in the wild and released, if possible, Feaser said.

Mattrick was issued a warning but was not cited with any violations, Feaser said. She could have been fined from $75 to $200 under the state law violation.

“You may not be in possession of an animal from the wild, period. It was an illegal act, and the animal had to be removed,” he said.

Mattrick was undergoing oral surgery Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Her husband, Phil Mattrick, said she was “distraught.”

“I’m upset because they upset my wife so,” he said. “They could have handled it better. They came to the door with police and sidearms. They could have maybe given her other choices. They could have written her a letter first.”

Mattrick, 56, who was dealing with personal and physical hardships at the time, credits the bird with giving her a new lease of life.

But Feaser says Mattrick should have taken the bird to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and not kept it.

“We recognize that well-meaning, well-intentioned people want to care for wildlife, but in many cases, that care normally is what kills the animal — they literally kill them with kindness,” Feaser said.

Moreover, he pointed out, bringing wild animals inside can expose the would-be rescuer and others to lice, ticks and fleas and wildlife-borne diseases such as rabies.

The best thing for the bird would have been to have taken it to a wildlife rehabilitator after the rescue, agreed Leah Stallings, a rehabilitator licensed by the Game Commission. She’s executive director of Ark Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Bucks County.

“It’s a shame when something like that happens because her intentions were good,” Stallings said. “She absolutely needed to rescue it, and a wildlife rehabilitation center would have raised and released it.

“Her heart was in the right place, but when it became a captive it really wasn’t doing the bird any favors. Unfortunately, they’re making an example out of her.”

Since the bird has been flying freely and has been fed a healthy diet, its chances of being able to fend for itself and being released appear to be good, Stallings said.

But Mattrick’s pastor, Robert Roberge of Living Hope Assembly Church, said he’s never heard Mattrick so upset.

“My thought is that that bird is a very therapeutic pet to Pati and that it would be a shame if it were taken away.”

Source: http://articles.lancasteronline.com

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